Ukraine’s National Agency on Corruption Prevention listed the Chinese Alibaba Group Holding Limited as an international sponsor of war. The company owns one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms, AliExpress.
The NACP reported this on its website.
Why the NACP listed the owner of AliExpress as a sponsor of war
According to the NACP, Alibaba Group operates in Russia through Alibaba.COM (RU) ltd, which earned an income of 16.3 billion rubles (around $160 million) in 2022. Significant parts of this amount are paid to the Russian state budget as taxes, thus financing the aggressor army.
Quzhou Nova, another Chinese company, also bought at least 3,220 tons of copper alloy worth a total of $7.4 million from the Debaltsevsky Plant of Metallurgical Engineering, which is located on the temporarily occupied territory and is controlled by the Russians. The company uses the copper imported from the occupied territory to produce goods, which it sells on Alibaba’s platforms.
It is worth noting that Alibaba also censors Ukrainian content related to Russia’s war on its platforms. In March 2022, Alibaba blocked the profile of a Ukrainian streamer who had more than 268,000 followers on AliExpress for a post about war. At the same time, pro-Russian posts on the platform are not deleted.
What is known about Alibaba Group
Alibaba is one of the world's largest retail and e-commerce companies. It owns Taobao.com, Tmall, Alibaba.com, AliExpress, and other web portals. The company’s primary activities are B2B trade and online retail. It also owns one of the world's largest cloud computing infrastructures and has assets in the media and entertainment industries.
In 2022, the company's annual revenue was $134 billion. As of 2022, Alibaba had the ninth-highest global brand valuation.
Earlier, the NACP listed Bermuda-based Bacardi Limited, producer of Martini and Bacardi, as an international sponsor of war. The company still trades with Russia.
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